Doctor Faustus (64 page)

Here is how it happened: I had reached Pfeiffering early in the afternoon; Adrian and I returned soon after four from a walk in the meadows after tea and saw to our surprise an automobile standing in the courtyard, by the elm tree. It was not an ordinary taxi, but more like a private car, the kind one sees, with chauffeur, out in front of an automobile business, for hire by the hour or the day. The driver, whose uniform was designed to carry the same idea, stood beside the car smoking, and as we passed him he lifted his peaked cap with a broad grin, probably thinking of the jokes his amazing passenger had made on the way. Frau Schweigestill came towards us from the house, a visiting-card in her hand, and spoke in subdued and startled voice. A man was there, she told us, a “man of the world”—the phrase, as she whispered it, and as a rapid summing—up of a guest she had that moment clapped eyes on, had something uncannily perceptive about it, almost sibylline. Perhaps the euphemism is more understandable coupled with the other which Frau Else supplied on top of it: she called the man a crazy loon. “
Scher Madame
” was what he had called her, and after that “
petite maman
” and he had pinched Clementine’s cheek. Frau Else had shut the girl into her room until the “man of the world” should be gone. But she couldn’t send him off with a flea in his ear, eh, him coming like that from Munich in a car? So there he was, waiting in the big room. With misgiving we examined the card, which gave us all the information we needed; it read: “Saul Fitelberg.
Arrangements musicaux
.
Representant de nombreux artistes prominents
.” I rejoiced that I was on the spot to protect Adrian; I should not have liked him to be delivered over alone to this “
representant
” We betook ourselves to the Nike room.

Fitelberg was already standing at the door, and although Adrian let me go in first, the man’s whole attention was at once addressed to him. After one cursory glance at me through his horn-rimmed glasses he swung his whole plump body round to look beyond me at the man on whose account he had let himself in for the expense of a two hours’ auto journey. Of course it is no great feat to distinguish between a simple high-school teacher and a man set apart by genius. But the visitor’s swift orientation, his glib recognition of my unimportance despite my walking in ahead, his pounce on his proper prey—all in all, it was an impressive performance.

“Cher maitre,” he began, with a smile, rattling off his speech with a harsh accent but uncommon fluency: “Comme je suis heureux, comme je suis emu de vous trouver! Meme pour un homme gate, endurci comme moi, c’est toujours une experience touchante de rencontrer un grand homme.—Enchante, monsieur le professeur,” he added in passing as Adrian presented me, and put out his hand carelessly, turning again at once to the right address.

“Vous maudirez l’intrus, cher Monsieur Leverkühn,” said he, accenting the name on the last syllable as though it were spelt Le Vercune. “Mais pour moi, etant une fois a Munich, c’etait tout a fait impossible de manquer—oh, yes, I speak German,” he interrupted himself, with the same not unpleasant hard quality in his voice: “Not well, not perfectly, but I can make myself understood. Du reste, je suis convaincu that you know French perfectly. Your settings to the Verlaine poems are the best evidence in the world. Mais apres tout, we are on German soil—how German, how homely, how full of character! I am enchanted with the idyllic setting in which you, Maitre, have been so wise as to settle down… Mais oui, certainement, let us sit down, many thanks, a thousand thanks!”

He was a man of perhaps forty, fat, not pot-bellied but fleshy and soft in his limbs and his thick white hands; smooth-shaven, full-faced, with a double chin, strongly marked arched brows, and lively almond-shaped eyes full of southern meltingness behind the horn-rimmed glasses. His hair was thinning, but he had sound white teeth which were always visible, for he smiled all the time. He was dressed in elegant summer clothes, a waisted striped blue flannel suit and canvas shoes with yellow leather bands. Mother Schweigestill’s description of him was amusingly justified by his easy manner and refreshing lightness of touch. Like his rapid-fire, slightly indistinct, always rather high-pitched voice, sometimes breaking into a treble, his airiness was peculiar to his whole bearing, counteracting the plumpness of his person, while actually, in a way, in harmony with it. I found this lightness of touch refreshing; it had become part of him, and it did actually inspire the absurdly soothing conviction that we all take life unconscionably hard. It seemed always to be saying: “Why not? So what? Means nothing. Let’s be happy!” And involuntarily one strove to chime in.

That he was anything but stupid will be evident when I repeat his conversation, which is still fresh in my mind. I shall do well to leave the word entirely to him, since whatever Adrian or I interpolated or replied played scarcely any role. We sat down at one end of the massive long table which was the chief furnishing of the peasant room: Adrian and I next to each other, our guest opposite. He did not beat about the bush very long; his hopes and intents came out quite soon.

“Maitre,” said he, “I quite understood how you must cling to the distinguished retirement of the abode you have chosen—oh, yes, I have seen it all, the hill, the pond, the village, and church, et puis cette maison pleine de dignite avec son hotesse maternelle et vigoureuse. Madame Schweigestill! Ca veut dire: ‘Je sais me taire. Silence, silence!’ Comme c’est charmant! How long have you lived here? Ten years? Without a break—or nearly so? C’est etonnant! But oh, how easy to understand! And still, figurez-vous, I have come to tempt you away, to betray you to a temporary unfaithfulness, to bear you on my mantle through the air and show you the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them—or even more, to lay them at your feet… Forgive my pompous way of talking. It is really ridiculously exaggere, especially as far as the ‘glories’ go. It is not so grand as that, nothing so very thrilling about those glories; I am saying that who after all am the son of little people, living in very humble circumstances, really miese, you know, from Lublin in the middle of Poland; of really quite little Jewish parents—I am a Jew, you must know, and Fitelberg is a very ordinary, low-class, Polish-German-Jewish name; only I have made it the name of a respected protagonist of avant-garde culture, whom great artists call their friend. C’est la verite pure, simple et irrefutable. The reason is that from my youth up I have aspired to higher things, more intellectual and interesting—above all to whatever is a novelty and sensation—the scandalous today which tomorrow will be the fashion, the dernier cri, the best-seller—in short, art. A qui le dis-je? Au commencement etait le scandale.

“Thank God, that lousy Lublin lies far behind me. More than twenty years I have been living in Paris—will you believe it, for a whole year I attended philosophy lectures at the Sorbonne! But a la longue they bored me. Not that philosophy couldn’t be a best-seller too. It could. But for me it is too abstract. And I have a vague feeling that it is in Germany one should study metaphysics—perhaps the Herr Professor, my honoured vis-a-vis, will agree with me… After that I had a little boulevard theatre, small, exclusive, un creux, une petite caverne for a hundred people, nomme ‘Theatre des fourbenes gracieuses.’ Isn’t that a peach of a name? But what would you, the thing wasn’t financially possible. So few seats, they had to be so high-priced, we had to make presents of them. We were lewd enough, I do assure you; but too highbrow too, as they say in English. James Joyce, Picasso, Ezra Pound, the Duchesse de Clermont-Tonnere—it wasn’t enough of an audience. En un mot, the fourberies gracieuses had to fold up after a short season. But the experiment was not entirely without fruit, for it had put me in touch with the leaders of the artistic life of Paris, painters, musicians, writers. In Paris today—even here I may say it—beats the pulse of the living world; and in my position as director, it opened to me the doors of several aristocratic salons where all these artists gathered…

“Perhaps that surprises you? Perhaps you will say ‘How did he do it? How did the little Jewish boy from the Polish provinces manage to move in on these fastidious circles, all among the creme de la creme?’ Ah, gentlemen, nothing easier. How quickly one learns to tie a white tie, to enter a salon with complete nonchalance, even if it goes a few steps down, and to forget the sensation that you don’t know what to do with your hands! After that you just keep on saying ‘madame’: ‘Ah, madame, O madame, que pensez-vous, madame; on me dit, madame, que vous etes fana-tique de musique?’ That is as good as all there is to it. Believe me, from the outside these things are exaggere.

“Enfin, I cashed in on the connections I owed to the Fourberies, and they multiplied when I opened my agency for the presentation of contemporary music. Best of all, I had found myself, for as I stand here, I am a born impresario; I can’t help it, it is my joy and pride, I find my satisfaction et mes delices in discovering talent, genius, interesting personalities, beating the drum, making society mad with enthusiasm or at least with excitement, for that is all they ask, et nous nous rencontrons dans ce desir. Society demands to be excited, challenged, torn in sunder for and against; it is grateful for that as for nothing else, for the diversion and the turmoil qui fournit le sujet for caricatures in the papers and endless, endless chatter. The way to fame, in Paris, leads through notoriety—at a proper premiere people jump up several times during the evening and yell ‘Insulte! Impudence! Bouffonerie ignominieuse!’ while six or seven initiates, Erik Satie, a few surrealistes, Virgil Thomson, shout from the loges: ‘Quelle precision! Quel esprit! C’est divin! C’est supreme! Bravo! Bravo!’

“I fear I shock you, messieurs—if not Monsieur Le Vercune, then perhaps the Herr Professor. But in the first place I hasten to add that a concert evening never yet broke down in the middle; that is not what even the most outraged want at bottom; on the contrary they want to go on being outraged, that is what makes them enjoy the evening, and besides, remarkable as it is, the informed minority always command the heavier guns. Of course I do not mean that every performance of outstanding character must go as I have described it. With proper publicity, adequate intimidation beforehand, one can guarantee an entirely dignified result; and in particular if one were to present today a citizen of a former enemy nation, a German, one could count on an entirely courteous reception from the public.

“That is indeed the sound speculation upon which my proposition, my invitation is based. A German, un boche qui par son genie appartient au monde et qui marche a la tete du progres musical! That is today a most piquant challenge to the curiosity, the broad-mindedness, the snobisme, the good breeding of the public—the more piquant, the less this artist disguises his national traits, his Germanisme, the more he gives occasion for the cry: ‘Ah, ca c’est bien allemand, par exemple!’ For that you do, cher Maitre, why not say so? You give this occasion everywhere—not so much in your beginnings, the time of the
Phosphorescence de la mer
and your comic opera, but later and more and more from work to work. Naturellement, you think I have in mind your ferocious discipline, and que vous enchainez votre art dans un systeme de regies inexorables et neo-classiques, forcing it to move in these iron bands—if not with grace, yet with boldness and esprit. But if it is that that I mean, I mean at the same time more than that when I speak of your qualite d’Allemand; I mean—how shall I put it?—a certain four-squareness, rhythmical heaviness, immobility, grossierete, which are old-German-en effet, entre nous, one finds them in Bach too. Will you take offence at my criticism? Non, j’en suis sur—you are too great. Your themes—they consist almost throughout of even note values, minims, crotchets, quavers; true enough, they are syncopated and tied but for all that they remain clumsy and unwieldy, often with a hammering, machinelike effect. C’est ‘boche’ dans un degre fascinant. Don’t think I am finding fault, it is simply enormement characteristique, and in the series of concerts of international music which I am arranging, this note is quite indispensable…

“You see, I am spreading out my magic cloak. I will take you to Paris, to Brussels, Antwerp, Venice, Copenhagen. You will be received with the intensest interest. I will put the best orchestras and soloists at your service. You shall direct the
Phosphorescence
, portions of
Love’s Labour’s Lost
, your Cosmologic Symphony. You will accompany on the piano your songs by French and English poets and the whole world will be enchanted that a German, yesterday’s foe, displays this broad-mindedness in the choice of his texts—ce cosmopolitisnle genereux et versatile! My friend Madame Maia de Strozzi-Pecic, a Croatian, today perhaps the most beautiful soprano voice in the two hemispheres, will consider it an honour to sing your songs. For the instrumental part of Keats’s hymns I will engage the Flonzaley Quartet from Geneva or the Pro Arte from Brussels. The very best of the best—are you satisfied?

“What do I hear—you do not conduct? You don’t? And you would not play piano? You decline to accompany your own songs? I understand. Cher Maitre, je vous comprends a demi-mot! It is not your way to linger with the finished work. For you the doing of a work is its performance, it is done when it is written down. You do not play it, you do not conduct it, for you would straightway change it, resolve it in variations and variants, develop it further and perhaps spoil it. How well I understand! Mais c’est dommage, pourtant. The concerts will suffer a decided loss of personal appeal. Ah, bah, we must see what we can do. We must look about among the world-famous conductors to interpret—we shall not need to look long. The permanent accompanist of Madame de Strozzi-Pecic will take over for the songs, and if only you, Maitre, are simply present and show yourself to the public, nothing will be lost, everything will be gained.

“But that is the condition—ah, non! You cannot inflict upon me the performance of your works
in absentia
. Your personal appearance is indispensable, particulierement a Paris, where musical renown is made in three or four salons. What does it cost you to say a few times: ‘Tout le monde sait, madame, que votre jugement musical est infaillible?’ It costs you nothing and you will have a lot of satisfaction from it. As social events my productions rank next after the premieres of Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe—if they do rank after them. You would be invited out every evening. Nothing harder, generally speaking, than getting into real Paris society. But for an artist nothing is easier, even if he is only standing in the vestibule to fame, I mean the sensational appeal. Curiosity levels every barrier, it knocks the exclusive right out of the field…